Resentment as a cultural response to economic struggle has political consequences. More than half of US workers are unhappy with their jobs. The frustration you experience by not living the life you imagined is created by the resentment that the outcome of an event is less than you imagined it would be. Donald Trump himself is a cauldron of resentment, who has deeply internalized a life-time of deep resentments, and thus is able to tap into, articulate, and mobilize the resentments of his followers, in a way that Democrats and other professional politicians can. Trump appeals to resentment that ultimately rests on economic failure: working-class whites have been left behind by soaring inequality (but they mistakenly blame emigrants taking their jobs). Donald Trump – figured out how to harness their disillusionment and growing anger – is superior to the others in exploiting the narcissism of small differences to recruit the Republican base.
Claiming to be the victim of the political establishment has been key to Trump’s political persona and the basis of Trumpism. Donald Trump harnessed the resentment and sense of victimhood of the Republican Party. Trump came across unceasingly pained, injured and aggrieved: the primaries were unfair, the debates were unfair, the general election was unfair. He gave a voice to that part of America that also feels aggrieved. Trump claimed there was a conspiracy against him supported by ‘fake’ news. Today Trump’s paranoid White House continues to see ‘deep state’ enemies on all sides. He became the representative of the idea of the new whiny right: waning power of whiteness, privilege, patriarchy, access, and the cultured surety that accrues to those in possession of such. With respect to the 2020 loss, he spent months laying the groundwork for large swaths of voters to be receptive to his claim that it was wrongly taken from him.
Donald Trump was hugely successful in harnessing white identity politics and the politics of white resentment. Trump ran on a promise of restoration, a nostalgia for a time gone by, and the sense that America, particularly white America, is losing and has been losing for years. There is not one big reason Donald Trump won. His election promises represented an appeal to popular resentment, to so-called herd instincts. Trump appeals to resentment that ultimately rests on economic failure: working-class whites have been left behind by soaring inequality (but they mistakenly blame emigrants taking their jobs). He promises to bring back the kind of greatness that once existed, but has been taken over by the politically correct that is too focused on diversity to recognise and support the forgotten white man. Trump feasts on social divisions and has perfected harnessing the rage of the workers driven by the failure of neoliberal market fundamentalism.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), an English philosopher and economist, believed that society was evolving towards increasing freedom of individuals and held that government intervention ought to be minimal in political and social life. Spencer’s survival of the fittest concept was believed to be natural, hence morally correct. Spencer preferred the Lamarckian evolution of adapted characteristics in which he believed that societies like living organisms evolve from simple states into highly complex forms – equating evolution with progress. He saw evolutionary progress as an economic problem, worked out at the level of the individual. This supported the doctrine of social Darwinism promoted to justify laissez-faire economics, thought best to promote unfettered competition between individuals, and the gradual improvement of society through the survival of the fittest. Consistent with this thinking, most individuals in Trump’s cabinet and donor lists support a system, through which feelings of resentment, fear, anger, and loathing are enacted against the weak, who are considered a drain on the worthy.
Trump won the 2016 election through the promise to build a wall and the rhetoric of racist nationalism. Trickle-down economics destabilizes social order by promising and then ‘dashing’ hopes of individual liberation. Here nationalism plays the role of filling the gap that consumerism can never satisfy, providing placebo compensation for the uncertainty and instability of modern life, social cohesion beyond the fragmentation of the marketplace, and encouraging allegiance to the interests of one’s national ideology. But Trump’s nationalism is, more than ever before, a mystification, if not a dangerous fraud with its promise of making a country ‘great again’ and its demonization of the ‘other’; it conceals the real conditions of existence, and the true origins of suffering, even as it seeks to replicate the comforting balm of transcendental ideals within a bleak earthly horizon. Its political resurgence shows resentment – in this case, of people who feel left behind by the globalized economy.
We fear new because of the uncertainty it brings – we might lose what is associated with change. Our aversion to loss can even cause logic to fly out the window. In rural areas of the US there are many people who feel that neither party represents them, and many have a strong resentment toward the cities and urban elites. Many times, this resentment comes out as a feeling of, “I’m a deserving person, a hardworking American and the things I deserve are actually going to other people who are less deserving.” Donald Trump’s message really tapped into that sentiment. The message of Trumpism is: You are right, you are not getting your fair share, you should be angry, you are a deserving, hardworking American and what you deserve is going to people who don’t deserve it. In 2020 he turned to racist fears of Black people with emphasis on “defund the police” message of progressives along with the smoke and mirrors of increase in taxes of a Biden administration, so-called socialism.
Nietzsche argues “concepts are metaphors which do not correspond to reality.” Although all concepts are metaphors invented by humans (created to facilitate ease of communication), Nietzsche observes, humans forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe they are ‘true’ although they do not correspond to reality. Nietzsche believed, one should be conscious of the illusory nature of what is considered truth, thus opening up the possibility of the creation of new values. It is necessary to create the social environment or milieu to support good governance to control cognitive dissonance and the consequent balancing of perception that leads to misperception. Nietzsche argued that one of the most powerful forces in society was “ressentiment [French for resentment].” According to their use, ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration. The resentment that grows in the weak turns eventually to be evil, deceitful and hateful.
Donald Trump won the election in 2016 largely because enough voters in three states, all in the Rustbelt, who had voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, switched their vote from Democratic to Republican. Economic dislocations played a crucial role in these swing states or Democratic strongholds to persuade many voters to take the dramatic step to vote for an anti-establishment candidate even if that meant a leap of faith into the unknown. Protest and extreme-right voting which research has shown that racist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments are an important voting motive, nearly worked in 2020, succeeded in getting Trump the second most votes of any candidate in the history of US elections. Donald Trump’s trickle-down economics approach will not be enough to counter the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. He is leaving an economic mess for Joe Biden to clean up.
At the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner (WHCD) President Obama roasted Donald Trump. This created enough resentment to push Trump to enter the 2016 primaries for president. He wanted to stick it to the Washington elites who laughed at him that night. He believes the elite unfairly challenged the legitimacy of his 2016 election, so he merely reciprocates. Post-2020 election Donald Trump plays the resentment card that initially got him elected: Trump’s blizzard of misleading fundraising emails and his refusal to concede is bad for the country, but it’s raking in the money for Trump. This money is funding Trump’s farcical legal challenges of the election results. His ongoing anger is reflected in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, in order to discredit Biden’s legitimacy. This disinformation program is poisoning the soil making it more difficult for Biden to handle the current crises and start to heal the nation’s self-destructive divisions left by Trumpism.
Trump is a narcissist, and narcissists are liars. Narcissism and resentment go together. The usual explanation is that narcissists are resentful because the world doesn’t recognize their brilliance or meet their demands for special privileges. Narcissism is a disorder of the self – a self based on opportunism instead of values. For them life is a game and they play to win, and the lie becomes necessary for their own survival. When we’re involved with a narcissist, cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that keeps many clinging to a narcissistic person like Trump, who has succeeded in creating two camps. There is more to it than the profound effect he has had on the Republican party, but also the long-lasting damage he has inflicted. Like carriers of a virus, narcissistic leaders “infect” the very cultures of their organizations, leading to dramatically lower levels of collaboration and integrity at all levels – even after they are gone.1
1 Mickey Butts. (5 Oct 2020) How narcissistic leaders infect their organizations’ cultures. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-narcissistic-leaders-infect-cultures.html